


Vapor Transmission

by poisontaster



Category: Aeon Flux (2005)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sibling Incest, clone incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-04
Updated: 2005-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-14 13:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2192901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Will I see you again?</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vapor Transmission

“Why do you always choose him?” Oren asks her, when she is still Catherine—albeit the third—and he is Oren-the-fourth, thanks to an untimely accident with the Citadel’s defense grid.

“Because he is my husband,” she answers, unthinking, “and because I love him,” and she looks across the lab to where he is discussing reagent properties with his younger self. He—they—catch her look and smile at her. She’s still not used to seeing that smile in tandem, but it’s beautiful in any capacity.

“I love you.” She looks back at Oren the younger, a little surprised.

“Well, I love you too, Oren,” she answers, and it’s true. “But I’m _in_ love with Trevor.”

“Oren,” Oren the elder says from the doorway. His eyes are hooded by shadow and he holds out a hand to his younger self. “Come on, I have something I want to show you.”

“Go on,” she says, and ruffles his hair. He ducks his head and goes, dragging heels all the way.

“Catherine,” Trevor calls then, and she forgets about Oren, younger and elder, joining the Trevors at the table.

< 0 >

_“Catherine—“ he said, that first morning after that wonderful, indescribable, magical night. “Will I see you again?”_

Somehow, she doesn’t think this is what he meant.

< 0 >

Oren teaches him everything, but he learns about Trevor on his own.

Catherine is dead.

Worse than dead, there will never be another Catherine. Oren told him; she was…contaminated.

He doesn’t know what this feeling is; he’s not sure he understands _dead_. Usually this is the time there is another baby, and no one sleeps. Now, Trevor—his Trevor—has wept himself to sleep, and Oren and Trevor are locked up in the book room. He is alone, and he is lonely.

He wants Oren. And there are other ways into the book room

He has free run of the place; they all do. It’s warm outside—as it always is. The weather is as regulated as their bodies, their lives. His gene markers make him immune to the fear laden pollens of the orchard. He shakes the branches hard and imagines it spreading out into the city creating terror, screaming, tears.

It seems fitting.

Through the tunnel and through the iris. It makes little noise, but he doubts Oren or Trevor would have heard even if it screamed bloody murder. The bottle gleams on the table between them, mostly empty. Another lies discarded and on its side.

This Trevor is crying too, though less noisily. This must be a product of age. He’s talking too, saying, “No…no…”

Oren kneels at Trevor’s feet.

 _He will give you all the work,_ Oren tells him at night, when they are alone ( _it’s all right; you are me; should we not love ourself?), but it’s his face they will show on broadcast and billboard. Bregna’s savior. And you are just its caretaker._

There is bitterness in him when he says it, but there is love in his face now, with his hands on Trevor’s shoulders and their heads bent together. “It’s okay; it’s okay…” Oren says.

“No… It’s not okay. She’s gone. Really gone. How could it happen, Oren? Contamination…we’ve been so careful. How…?” Trevor bends under the weight of his grief, and Oren understands it because he feels it too.

“Shh. Shh.” Oren covers Trevor’s lips. Oren doesn’t know how he knows, but Oren is not nearly as drunk as Trevor. “It’s okay. _I’m_ here.”

Trevor pats Oren’s cheek, fumblingly. “I know. You’re a good brother.”

“I love you.”

Oren holds his breath. He can’t move now if he wants to.

“I know you do.” Trevor’s head hangs limply. He is emptied and halfway to sleep. His breath sighs out. “Catherine…”

“I can show you…”

Metal clanks as Oren fumbles with the buckles, fastenings, ties. “No,” Trevor says softly, then more strongly, “ _no_.”

But Oren pushes his hands away, pushes Trevor against the chair back again.

_”Oren—“_

“I’m here, Trevor. Can’t you see it? She’s gone, and I’m here. I’m _here_.”

“Oren…” Trevor’s breath sighs out again, and Oren—both Orens—know it’s defeat.

< 0 >

Trevor wakes up when Oren crawls under the blankets with him.

“Oren…what…?”

“Shhh. It’s okay.” He puts his fingers over the other boy’s lips. Trevor’s mouth is soft, the skin chapped and broken. He bites his lips, when he concentrates. “They’re doing it too. The others. We don’t have to be alone.”

“I miss her,” Trevor confesses, when Oren moves his hand away.

Oren nods. “I do too. But we have each other still.”

“Always,” Trevor murmurs.

“Always,” Oren replies, bending his forehead to Trevor’s and closing his eyes.

< 0 >

“Trevor?”

Trevor looks over at him then beckons. “Come here, Trevor; I want to give you something.” Trevor looks bad; bloodshot and shaking. He holds something in his hand. He presses it into Trevor’s when he comes closer. Trevor turns it over and looks at it. It’s a hard render, not even a holo. A genuine hard-render. It’s Catherine. She smiles over her shoulder, the way she always has.

“Trevor?” He looks into Trevor’s face, the face that will someday be his, the way this lab, this city, this _life_ will someday be his.

“They will forget,” Trevor explains. “The ones that come after you. There may be…residual memory, but they won’t know what they mean. You have to remind them. You have to make sure they don’t forget…” he breaks off and his face twists and nearly breaks. “Don’t let them forget her.”

His fingers close hard over the render until the edges dig in. He has the memories too, difficult to access at will, ghostly and faded. When this—all of this—is over, and he’s free to study as he will, he’d like to devote some time to studying the memories. How they’re transmitted, one generation to the next, why some memories transmit faithfully while others may skip generations or die out completely. But it’s like the knowledge that he once knew French; irrelevant to the work that must be done and thus, by necessity, discarded.

Catherine, on the other hand, must not be discarded. Trevor is right about that. He still can’t believe she’s gone, a huge gaping hole that he thinks nothing can ever fill. Not even his work. Not even Oren.

“I won’t,” he promises. “We will all remember. I promise.”

Trevor smiles. It’s a travesty, but it’s all they have left; now she is gone. “I know you will, Trevor. After all, you’re me.”

“Yes.”

< 0 >

_Will I see you again?_

< 0 >

In the Relicle, the Keeper plucks the string and the note rings out, quickly picked up by all the others, harmonic arpeggios of data and Time.

“It is time.”


End file.
